Push for FirstNet inquiry intensifies

Government investigators have been asked to probe potential conflicts of interest in a federal board that’s now building out a $7 billion nationwide wireless system for cops and firefighters.

One of the members of that network’s board, Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald, said in a letter Wednesday that he recently shared with the Commerce Department’s inspector general new evidence that some of FirstNet’s other members are too closely tied to wireless carriers and have ignored public safety officials’ communications needs.

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Fitzgerald said he presented the same documents to FirstNet’s own internal reviewers, who began looking into the Story County, Iowa, sheriff’s criticisms after he raised them at a fiery April board meeting. Fitzgerald wrote that he has “no comment” on the information he furnished as he hopes to allow the inspector general and FirstNet the “time to do their own investigations.”

The inspector general’s office didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment, but the watchdog typically neither confirms nor denies the existence of investigations. A spokeswoman for FirstNet, meanwhile, confirmed it is “continuing its review of the issues raised by Sheriff Fitzgerald,” adding: “We can’t comment further.” And a spokeswoman for Fitzgerald declined to share the evidence the sheriff presented.

The new developments mark another setback for FirstNet, which Congress authorized in 2012 to oversee the next generation of communications for first responders. Lawmakers and public safety groups alike sought the upgrade in response to the communications breakdowns during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts later.

Yet the new network, one of the biggest telecom projects in U.S. history, has rankled some state leaders who fear they may end up fronting part of the bill. And FirstNet, still in its infancy, already has been subject to intense lobbying by Motorola Solutions and other wireless and equipment companies that see major dollar signs at stake.

The mounting tensions have made the FirstNet board a hotbed of controversy.

Fitzgerald sounded alarms at a FirstNet meeting in April that other members might be tied too closely to wireless carriers. And the sheriff backed a formal resolution that said FirstNet’s initial plans were “developed largely by consultants” and that it had been “driven largely or entirely by board members having a commercial wireless point of view and not by board members with a public safety point of view.”

By May, the FirstNet board unanimously chartered a seven-member special review committee to examine Fitzgerald’s accusations. That review is ongoing. But the leader of FirstNet’s governing body, Sam Ginn, has rebuffed all of Fitzgerald’s allegations. “Every decision made by this board has to be made in public, and I think we’ve abided by that,” he said after Fitzgerald unveiled his resolution.

In the July 31 letter, Fitzgerald said he had “presented a lengthy document” to the internal review committee earlier that month as well as “supporting evidence in relation to each of the points I raised in my motion.” And the sheriff said he took the same “document and supporting evidence to the inspector general of the Department of Commerce and his staff.”

“At this time, I have no comment on my presentation, as I want to allow both the counsel to the Special Review Committee and the Inspector General time to do their own investigations,” Fitzgerald wrote in the letter obtained by POLITICO. “As I have said before, I made the April 2013 motion as a last resort, after having been unable to obtain any meaningful response to my often-raised concerns with the FirstNet board.”

Regardless of the outcome, Fitzgerald still urged FirstNet to rethink its practices.

“Through the special review committee process, I am hopeful that FirstNet will make certain reforms to improve our processes, increase our transparency, meaningfully include public safety and move forward to success,” he said. “The effective development of a nationwide public safety broadband network is critically important to all first responders, and I pledge to continue to do everything in my power to ensure that my public safety colleagues are deeply involved in this process and get the network we so desperately need.”